Crazy
by Jules1
Summary: Rodney has doubts about John's sanity. On more levels than one. Spoilers for The Real World.


"You picked a fine time to leeeeave me, Lucille…"

They stare and John smiles. He waves. He goes on singing. Badly and _loudly. _

"How soon can he--?"

"I don't know, Rodney."

He frowns through the plastic sheet and winces at Sheppard's caterwauling.

"How about before he goes completely around the bend?"

"Seriously, Rodney, he's only been in there for a few hours."

"_Six_, Carson. And I don't think the bend was all that far away to begin with."

Beckett pretends to ignore him. Or _actually_ ignores him, it's hard to tell. Rodney glares and when it doesn't do any good he throws up his hands moves closer to the quarantine barrier.

"Soon," he says. Big smile and a thumbs up. If it's true, great. If it's not, then God help them, Sheppard will probably keep singing until their ears bleed.

He stops for the time being, though, and fixes Rodney with a look that says in no uncertain terms that his claim of "soon" is a great steaming mound. Then he heaves a sigh and sits up on the gurney. Dangles his feet over the side and swings them and looks suspiciously thoughtful.

"I think the next one should be Sue."

"The next what?"

"Wraith."

"A wraith named Sue?"

Sheppard smirks, and it spreads into a grin and Rodney knows what's coming and that there's not a thing he can do to stop it.

"Now I don't blame him 'cause he run and hid, but the meanest thing that he ever did was before he left he went and…sucked the damn life right out of me and left me all shriveled up and…gross…" He mutters and meanders and finally comes back with: "How much longer is it gonna be, Doc? I'd like to take a pee without an audience sometime soon."

"You should have thought about that before you broke quarantine, Colonel. I thought you military types were accustomed to sitting and waiting for indefinite periods of time."

Rodney blinks at the sharp edges in Beckett's tone. "'You military types', Carson? Did I miss something?"

"He's pissed at me and my potential nanocooties for making him set up another quarantine cell." Sheppard slides off the gurney and saunters up to the barrier. "Can I at least get some food in here?"

Beckett twitches a glance over his shoulder but doesn't respond. Rodney frowns at him. Steps over and tugs at a white sleeve. "Carson? Can I feed him?"

"I'm not in the damn zoo, Rodney."

"Yes, you can feed him," says Beckett. "But stick to the protocols or you'll be in there with him."

"Where the singing is much louder, yes. I'll be careful."

"Funny, McKay."

"I'll be right back." Rodney flashes a quick, close-mouthed smile. Turns on his heel and flees the opening lines of Patsy Cline's "Crazy".

The mess is almost empty. A few insomniacs. Graveyard shift staff on their meal break. And Biro. She nods at him and goes back to poking at the cake on her tray. Rodney wanders through the line alone. Avoids the stuff that looks dodgy and takes a bunch of what doesn't and fails to resist the urge to grab an extra piece of cake for himself. On the way out, he swerves toward Biro's table.

"McKay."

"Biro."

She raises her fork. "Midnight cake run. You?"

"Mission of mercy. Colonel Sheppard's still in quarantine."

"Ooh, I'll take it to him."

"Oh, _seriously_..." Rodney rolls his eyes and peels away from the table.

"Tell him I said 'hi'!"

He shifts the tray to one hand and sketches a wave as he retreats from the mess. "Will do."

Rodney glances down, picks up a frosted brown square with two fingers. He bites off a corner and nods his approval to no one in particular. Biro's onto something with the midnight cake runs. He eyes the other piece and figures that the last thing Sheppard needs right now is sugar.

Most of the infirmary is empty. Not many patients, which he supposes is a good thing. Closer to quarantine, he sees no one at all and wonders if they stepped out on their own or if Carson sent them away. Sheppard amusing himself is bad enough. With an audience it might turn into a full-blown floor show.

"My ding-a-ling…my ding-a-ling…I want you to play with my—"

"Colonel!"

Rodney laughs out loud. Through a mouthful of cake, he says: "Going well, Carson?"

Beckett presses his mouth into a straight line and glares. "I think he's trying to see if I can stay annoyed as long as he can stay off-key. I could never be that annoyed. Ever in my life."

"So how long—?"

"If this is negative, he can go." Beckett spins the chair around to face the quarantine cell. Crosses his arms over his chest and speaks loudly and slowly, as if to a dim child. "Forty-five minutes of peace, Colonel. Can you manage?"

"This'll help." Rodney passes Beckett the tray. Shrugs at the look it earns him and gestures at himself. "No suit."

"Aye." Beckett hauls himself out his seat and shuffles to the curtain. As he passes the tray through: "Eat _slowly_, please."

"Thanks, Doc."

"Hey, I—"

Sheppard smirks. "Thank you, Rodney."

"You're welcome." He grabs the back of a chair and pulls it up to the barrier. Drops into it and pops the last of the cake into his mouth. "Doctor Biro says 'hi'."

"I think she likes me."

"She's also interested in abnormality, illness and dysfunction. Ah, well. There you go."

He watches Sheppard eat. Sometimes fingers, sometimes fork and all enthusiasm. As if at any moment someone is going to come and snatch the food away. Something most of the military personnel he knows have in common, regardless of their planet of origin. It's not the only thing.

"That was stupid."

Sheppard raises an eyebrow. "Eating the green beans first?"

He ignores the response. The first ones usually aren't worth much, anyway. Warning shots and diversions and he's used to it by now.

"It was dangerous."

"I already got the lecture, McKay."

Rodney snorted. "Oh, like that'll make a difference. There's no good reason why what you did worked in the first place, and I can't begin to imagine what possessed you. I can't begin to list how many things could go wrong, either. Granted, the version of the nanovirus we found here didn't kill anyone who possesses the ATA gene, but these could be different in so many ways. The Asurans have evolved independently and while they can't change certain specific aspects of their programming—"

"Rodney."

"—there's no reason they couldn't have changed others. I mean, they obviously have a serious beef with the Ancients. If the nanites were effected by the changes I made to the base code then anything derived from Niam's system could be capable of overriding those directives the same way it ignored the freeze command—"

"Rodney."

"—which means that instead of sparing anyone with the gene it's possible that they could have just gone straight after them and done all sorts of damage. Not that you were counting on the original programming to start with because that would require some sort of forethought and you never—"

"Rodney!"

"What?"

"You ate my cake, didn't you?"

Rodney blinks at Sheppard, at the absurdity of the question. He lets out a short, loud burst of involuntary laughter and gets a broad smile for it. With teeth, which hardly ever happens. Rodney is suddenly struck by the stray notion that maybe Sheppard wore braces as a child, which has nothing to do with anything and _dammit— _

"How do you do that?"

"Do what?"

_The Jedi Mind Trick, _he wants to say. _This is not the panic you're looking for. _

"Nothing."

Sheppard chews and watches him and has the nerve to look puzzled. "Look, I'll be fine. Why don't you go get some sleep?"

He's not going to sleep. Not without chemical help. "No, no. I'll stick around and…keep you from throwing yourself between any kittens and oncoming trains."

"My limit on that sort of thing is once per day."

"You just don't care, do you?"

"That you ate my cake?"

Sigh. "Never mind."


End file.
